It seems researchers in Japan really think outside the box. Tokyo Sewage needed a new way to deal with all its sewage mud (we call it sludge), so they asked Okayama Laboratory Researcher Mituyuki Ikeda to think about new solutions. He found that the mud contained a great deal of protein. He extracted the proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder to create an artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. According to Digital Trends web site, “the researchers color the poop with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. People even say it tastes like beef!”

Ikeda says that with the costs of the research included, the laboratory beef costs 10 to 20 times as much as beef from cattle. Once the research is completed, and it is put on the market he thinks they’ll be able to price it roughly the same as normal meat. One advantage of this product over regular meat is that it has less fat so it has fewer calories.

You can see an interview with Ikeda as he sits down to a meal of his own creation on the video below:

About the author

Kathy worked with the Bureau of Land Management for 12 years before founding Livestock for Landscapes in 2004. Her twelve years at the agency allowed her to pursue her goal of helping communities find ways to live profitably AND sustainably in their environment. She has been researching and working with livestock as a land management tool for over a decade. When she's not helping farmers, ranchers and land managers on-site, she writes articles, and books, and edits videos to help others turn their livestock into landscape managers.